The movies ofTim Burtonaren’t explicitly connected to each other, but there’s a popular theory connecting some of his most famous works, and another one adds to it while also explaining the origins ofThe Nightmare Before Christmas’ Sally. Tim Burton is one of the most beloved filmmakers of his generation thanks to his unique visual style and the type of stories he tells in his movies. Burton’s filmmaking career began in 1985 withPee-wee’s Big Adventure, and three years later, he fully displayed his style inBeetlejuice.
The following year, Burton joined the world of superheroes withBatman, and since then, he has mixed adaptations of other works with original stories, all of them with his unique style and a combination of horror, comedy, and gothic elements.Burton also adds some of his characters to other movies in Easter eggs, and while this doesn’t mean they are connected, it made way for a theory that links some of his best works, with another fueling it and giving some backstory toThe Nightmare Before Christmas’ Sally.
A Theory Suggests The Nightmare Before Christmas’ Sally Is Vincent’s Wife
Before his feature-length directorial debut,Tim Burton made various short films, and one of the most notable ones isVincent, made in 1982. Written and directed by Burton,Vincenttells the story of Vincent Malloy, a seven-year-old boy who is a huge fan of Vincent Price (the narrator of the short film) and pretends to be like him.Vincent has a wild but dark imagination, performs experiments on his dog, Abercrombie, and imagines the many horrors he could invent in his own, dark home with spiders and bats.
One day, while reading Edgar Allan Poe, Vincent read a passage that shocked him: his beautiful wife had been buried alive.
Among the many atrocities Vincent imagines are dipping his aunt in wax for his wax museum and wanting to create a zombie dog out of Abercrombie to search for victims “in the London fog”, and one day, while reading Edgar Allan Poe, he read a passage that shocked him: his beautiful wife had been buried alive. Vincent dug out her grave (which was his mother’s flower bed), but he mourned his wife alone in his room, later hearing her voice calling him from the grave.
A theory suggests that Vincent’s rescued and rebuilt wife wasThe Nightmare Before Christmas’ Sally, as she was a rag doll.
Though it’s not explicitly explained what Vincent would have done with his wife had he dug her out, and supposing she wasn’t alive anymore,it’s likely he would have tried to bring her backgiven all the things he imagined he did in his lab. A theory shared onTumblrsuggests that Vincent’s rescued and rebuilt wife wasThe Nightmare Before Christmas’ Sally, as she was a rag doll.
Sally was stitched togetherand made of mismatched pieces, which could have been the result of Vincent’s efforts to bring her back. Vincent didn’t succeed, and soSally was reborn in Halloweentown as a rag doll/Frankenstein’s monster-like creation, as the characters inThe Nightmare Before Christmas’ Halloweentown resembled how they died.
A Tim Burton Movie Theory Connects Vincent To Three Movies
A Dog Is The Connecting Link Between Some Of Burton’s Movies
This Vincent/Sally theory adds to the wider Tim Burton Movie Theory, which connects some of his most famous works:Vincent,The Nightmare Before Christmas,Frankenweenie, andCorpse Bride. The theory says Vincent’s dog Abercrombie was eventually taken away from him due to all the things he was doing to him and was adopted by the Frankenstein family fromFrankenweenie, becoming Sparky. After Sparky was brought back to life, he started losing his skin and becameCorpse Bride’s Scraps.
Tim Burton didn’t directThe Nightmare Before Christmas, but he served as producer and the movie is based on a story and characters created by him.
When Scraps passed away (if he didn’t before – after all, Scraps was in the afterlife inCorpse Bride), he turned into a ghost, becoming Zero fromThe Nightmare Before Christmas. Parallel to this,a theory explains Victor Frankenstein grew up to be Victor Van Dort fromCorpse Bride, and when Victor died, he becameThe Nightmare Before Christmas’ Jack Skellington – and he reunited with his dog.
10 Theories That Completely Change Tim Burton’s Movies
Tim Burton’s movies have made way for some interesting and wild theories, of which some would completely change more than one movie.
Surely, the theory and its branches have many flaws and leave many questions, such as why Victor changed his name so many times and what happened to Sparky/Scraps, but the Vincent/Sally theory adds another layer by adding Sally into the mix and giving her a backstory that can link to the rest of the Burtonverse.
Why Sally Being Vincent’s Wife Doesn’t Work (But The Rest Of The Theory Does)
One Key Detail Doesn’t Make The Theory Work
As fun as it is to give Sally a proper backstory, the Vincent/Sally theory doesn’t work, and the short filmVincentexplains why. Vincent was nothing more than a kid with a lot of imagination – and a very dark one, and his hallucinations were just that.Vincent obviously never had a wife and he never rebuilt anyone, so Sally can’t be Vincent’s deceased wife – however, this could still explain what happened to Sally when she was alive, but it wasn’t Vincent Malloy who “rebuilt” her.
The rest of the theory, despite the above-mentioned flaws and questions, could still work to some extent, at least when it comes to the story of the dog(s). Unlike other “movie universe” theories (most notably that of Quentin Tarantino), it’s unlikely theTim Burtonone is true or parts of it will be confirmed, but it adds some extra fun to some of his most popular stories.
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Henry Selick directs The Nightmare Before Christmas, a stop-motion fairytale from the mind of Tim Burton. Jack Skellington is the king of Halloween and one of Halloweentown’s most beloved citizens, but he longs for something more. When he stumbles across a magical door that leads him to discover Christmas, he makes it his mission to replace Santa Claus and bring festive cheer to his perpetually spooky hamlet.
